Disclaimer: Don't own Smallville/Supernatural

Wanna thank Amethyst246, vamp1987, Kit Merlot, bushlaboo, babyshan211 and Veronica for reviewing the previous chapter.

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Despite it usually being the other way around, Chloe drove in the Yaris with Lois while Ruby went on ahead with Sam to Bobby's in the Impala. The demon had asked Chloe for a switch, and since Chloe knew of the fascination Ruby had with Lois and spending every moment with the brunette, Chloe had known that if Ruby was asking to give up that time for some with Sam, it must be important, so she'd agreed to it.

Anyway, the conversation with Castiel kept playing on and on in her head, and as they continued to drive into the night, she kept becoming distracted. So Chloe was glad that she was with her cousin right now and not with Sam. Because she wasn't ready for Sam to notice something on her mind and wrangle it out of her.

She wasn't ready to tell him that heaven thought her the catalyst to his darkness---to the Apocalypse, in so many words.

Honestly, though, she didn't know if she'd ever be ready to tell him.

That was why she needed this time away from him to think.

So the drive to South Dakota was just heaven sent.

"You mind telling me the truth now?" Lois finally broke the silence, not looking away from the road as she followed the taillights of the Impala on the dark highway.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Chloe dodged, gaze going out her window, unable to look at her cousin.

Lois sighed. "Come on, Baby Cuz, you can't fool me, alright? And to be truthful, you fooled Ruby because she wasn't really paying attention and Sam was just too jealous of the situation to pay much attention to your evasiveness. But me? I know you. And I know how you are when you're lying or omitting something important."

Chloe closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cool glass. "I'm not lying."

"So you're omitting something. That's lying by default." Lois trudged on, not giving Chloe any room for argument. "Obviously if you didn't tell Sam right away it's something really bad, or it concerns him, or its something really bad that concerns him."

Chloe winced.

Lois paused for a second. "It's the third option, isn't it? It's something really bad that concerns Sam."

Chloe sighed.

"Look, you don't need to tell Sam right now if you don't want to, and you don't need to tell Ruby either. But you need to tell me, okay?" Lois' gaze went to a sign on the side of the road that stated that a gas station was coming up soon. "I'm your family, I love you unconditionally, and guess what? I love Sam too. He's like a dorky big brother who sometimes go darkside on me and I have to slap up the back of his head. But I love him. And if there's something bad going on you need to tell me."

Chloe sighed and turned to look at her cousin. "Pull over at the gas station."

Understanding, Lois nodded.

Pulling out her cellular, Chloe sent a text to Ruby.

We're pulling off for a bathroom stop. You two go on ahead. We'll catch up in a few minutes.

Less then a minute later she received a reply.

Okay.

Taking in a deep, fortifying breath, Chloe watched as the Impala drove by the gas station, and Lois put on the indicator as they headed off of the road towards the station. They didn't talk to each other as Lois left the car at the fuel tank, telling the man to 'fill 'er up', and they didn't talk on the way to the bathroom either.

Both walked side by side as they headed towards the flickering light over the worn out 'Ladies' sign and walked inside the damp, dingy, quite unhygienic public bathroom.

"Okay," Lois turned to Chloe after giving the bathroom a disgusted sneer. "Spill it. What happened?"

Chloe took in a deep breath, looking up at her cousin. "When I healed Bart, something happened, something different."

Lois raised an eyebrow but nodded for her to go on.

"For one, it didn't hurt, at all. None of the healing did. And it came really fast and easy and natural, I almost didn't have to do anything at all, like it healed everyone almost by instinct…and I could see everything healing as it was being healed."

Lois frowned. "I'm not seeing the bad part yet."

"It—it happened when I died." Chloe hesitated, taking in a deep breath and turning to face the mirror. "I---saw---…"

The door to the bathroom opened and a pretty redheaded woman in her thirties entered.

Lois' face erupted in annoyance and yet kept her back to the woman, trying to hide it from the redhead as best as possible.

The sound of the lock turning was their only warning before Lois suddenly went flying violently into the wall, pinned, and Chloe flew against the other.

Eyes that'd been brown moments ago bled black with sinister delight as the female smiled at them. "Hello girls, so lovely to see you two again."

Lois' eyes widened in horror. "Meg."

Chloe narrowed her eyes. "We sent you back to hell!"

It had happened shortly after Sam had come to live with her in her apartment in Smallville, and it'd been Lois' first exorcism. It'd done the woman much good to send the bitch who'd possessed her back to hell.

"Yeah, well, I came back." Meg sneered, ignoring Lois and walking towards Chloe. "Saw Dean, by the way. He said to say HI. Or, well, he would have, if he wasn't too busy choking on his own blood."

Chloe's eyes narrowed and she felt her body beginning to tremble.

Deep down inside she knew the horrors that Dean was going through, but yet to have the proof thrown in her face---…

And, she mightn't have ever met Dean, but he was the most important person in the world to Sam, and she loved him because Sam did.

"Hell's a bitch." Meg declared, coming closer to Chloe. "But especially if you were a Hunter, and so many of your cellmates were put there by you."

Anger boiled up in Chloe's stomach at the taunting, happy way the demon was telling her of Dean's sufferings.

"Did you know how happy they were when he was kicked downstairs? How they all waited for his soul to be damned? How they fought each other over who got to tear him to pieces first?" Meg whispered, giggling, reaching over with her hand to run her fingernails down Chloe's cheek hard enough to draw blood.

Chloe didn't react to the pain, she was intent on trying to struggle against the invisible hold pinning her to the wall, not even fighting the darkness as it spread throughout her body like a disease.

"And every demon you send downstairs?" Meg continued on, leaning forwards. "Who do you think is the first person they go to visit? Deanster. And boy, do they feel better once they leave him!"

Chloe felt her body trembling from rage and despair as those words sunk into her soul. Every single demon, every single one of them, that they'd exorcised, had gone to take out their anger and frustration on Dean.

"Hell, it was the first thing I did when you all sent me back down there." Meg confessed with a naughty grin. "Course, I had to wait a while, he had a long queue lined up to get a chance at ripping him to shreds. But I got my turn, and I made him scream."

Something in Chloe snapped, and she didn't exactly know what'd happened, but in a blink of an eye the power over her was gone and the one pinned to the wall was Meg, Chloe's hand around her throat.

Meg's eyes widened in shocked horror as she shook and tried to claw at Chloe's hands and yet while Chloe felt the pain it was second to her anger, her fury, her guilt and her bloodlust.

"Your eyes." Meg gasped breathlessly.

Chloe almost didn't hear those words, so consumed by the burning fire inside of her, tightening her hold, unwilling to hear anything else that came from those lips.

Lois arrived by her side silently, looking from Chloe to Meg and back.

"How…?" Meg's voice was painfully strained and she continued to wriggle and try to move, to rip Chloe's hand unsuccessfully from around her throat.

Images flashed before Chloe's eyes, images of Meg, of her host, of their insides. She could see flashes of the heart pumping, see flashes of the darkness inside, see flashes of where the demon clamped onto the host like a parasite.

"Dean will pay for this!" Meg wheezed the promise.

Chloe didn't hear her, head tilted, eyes widened slightly in shock as the flashes got closer and closer together until they weren't flashing anymore and she could just see it.

See…and know.

Her heart skipped a beat in horror as suddenly Castiel's words made sense.

You will understand your true power…and you will use it.

"Shut up you bitch!" Lois hissed, slamming her fist into the woman's face in anger. "Unless you didn't get the memo, we don't want to hear you!"

"We're going to get Dean out of there." Chloe finally spoke, hardly recognizing the deep, dark sound as her own voice. "And we're going to make you all pay for whatever you did to him tenfold."

Meg sneered, although there was fear in her eyes that she couldn't hide. "Go ahead, exorcise me. I'll just go straight to Deanie-Boy and give him your regards---if he's not too busy being Hell's Bitch!"

Chloe tightened her hold on Meg's neck. "We're not exorcising you."

The demon cried out hoarsely, desperately clawing at Chloe's hand.

Lois turned to Chloe, confused. "But we don't have the knife, or the colt. Sam and Ruby have them."

"I don't need them." Chloe responded hoarsely, narrowing her eyes on Meg and concentrating, binding them, trapping her, seeing the demon's eyes widen as she realized what was happening…that she couldn't escape her host.

"No…" Meg whispered hoarsely, barely audible. "You can't! You---you—--you'll kill this body too!"

"I know." Chloe whispered, finishing it, watching as Meg opened her mouth in an inaudible scream, lights exploding inside of her host's body, before the light's faded out into nothing…and the hosts body dried up in Chloe's trembling grip until it was nothing but dust on the ground.

Silence reigned in the bathroom.

"Chloe?" Lois finally whispered.

"Not here." Chloe's voice trembled audibly, nausea and despair rising up her throat, threatening to make her sick, as she gazed down at the dust. "I can't---not here."

Lois nodded, reaching for her cousin's now violently trembling shoulders and placing her arm around her, not afraid despite what she'd seen.

It made holding back the tears threatening to escape that much harder to keep at bay.

'You will understand your true power…and you will use it.' The words whispered condemningly in her ear as they went to the door and unlocked it, the night air rushing in to greet them as they stepped outside, both shaky.

Chloe was hardly able to keep it in, her whole body out of control, Lois tightening her grip supportively on her.

Sensing something to her right, Chloe turned her gaze towards the shadows beneath a pair of large trees, a small cry of despair escaping her lips as her green orbs met sad blue ones.

Castiel.

The angel stood in the shadows beneath the trees, watching her sadly, knowingly.

Sick to her core, Chloe couldn't do it any longer. She doubled over and heaved, arms around her stomach as she vomited and vomited, her tears freely escaping and making their ways down her cheeks.

"Chloe? Chloe!" Lois rubbed her back, worried.

Falling to her knees in the soil, Chloe finally managed to look back towards the trees once she'd stopped heaving, but Castiel was gone, vanished into the night.

And along with him, something in Chloe had disappeared too, something she knew she'd never get back again.

"Chloe?" Lois whispered, bending on her knees besides her cousin, rubbing her back comfortingly.

Chloe wiped her mouth with her sleeve and turned pleading, watery eyes on her cousin. "Help."

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#dodges rotten fruit#

Well, you DID see the name of the story before reading!

#continues to dodge rotten fruit…and some potatoes#

Review while waiting for the nest segment in this series?